Google NotebookLM is now available for all TMU Google accounts

April 28, 2026

To: All faculty and staff

All TMU Google account holders can now use their university Google Workspace account to access the education version of Google NotebookLM, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed for analysis, content organization and note-taking.

While the Google Gemini app (external link) (which became available at TMU a year ago) serves as a general prompt-based assistant using publicly-available information from the internet, NotebookLM is designed to work with files and data of your choice.

Key features of NotebookLM

Targeted analysis: You can upload or select specific files from your TMU Google Drive (such as documents, PDFs or videos) or link to websites. NotebookLM only analyzes these selected materials to summarize information, create study guides and answer questions with citations.
Collaboration: The "notebooks" you create in NotebookLM can be shared. You can grant others viewer or editor access to contribute to the sources used and generate content.

You can access the tool at notebooklm.google.com (external link) or by clicking the Google apps button in the upper right hand corner of your TMU Gmail account. Your TMU account should be visible in the upper right corner upon opening NotebookLM.

Protecting TMU data

As NotebookLM is part of our Google Workspace service, your data is protected under the university’s core agreement with Google when you log in with your TMU credentials.

Controlled access: NotebookLM can access and scan only the Google Drive contents that you explicitly select. It does not have access to all of the files and folders in your Google Drive.
No AI training on your data: Interactions with NotebookLM stay within the university’s instance of the Google cloud. Google will not use your prompts, responses, uploaded files or notebooks to train its AI models.

Data privacy and security

In tandem with TMU’s baseline privacy settings for Google AI tools, all TMU Google account holders share a responsibility to protect university data while using this app.

Only public or low-sensitivity information should be uploaded or input into NotebookLM.
Sensitive and confidential information, including personal information, should never be used in prompts, uploaded files or any other activities within the tool. Any uploading of files containing personal information to NotebookLM is an unauthorized use of personal information and must be reported to the Privacy Office as a possible privacy breach.
Copyrighted material and the intellectual property of others should never be used as source materials without consent from the copyright holders.
Licensed electronic content: The TMU Libraries’ electronic resources have license agreements that may not allow electronic content to be uploaded to third party platforms.

For help defining what is considered sensitive information, please review TMU’s Information Classification Standard and Handling Guidelines.

Resources and support

Whether you choose to use these tools or simply wish to understand them better, the following resources are available to support you:

TMU’s Google AI Tools Help Centre;
Generative Artificial Intelligence in Learning and Teaching from TMU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching;
Considerations for use of AI tools in relation to copyright, licensed electronic content, citations, finding library resources and more in TMU Libraries’ Generative AI Guide;
TMU’s overview of responsible use of generative AI; and
A general overview of NotebookLM (external link) directly from the Google Workspace Learning Centre.

Questions?

If you have any technical questions related to Google's AI tools, please contact the Computing and Communications Services (CCS) Help Desk via the IT Help portal, help@torontomu.ca or 416-979-5000, ext. 556806.

If you have any questions about AI use in learning and teaching, please contact the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching via the AskCELT portal or askcelt@torontomu.ca.